When they got outside in the street, they kicked him and stood him facing a brick building with two others, a young woman with blond Veronica Lake peekaboo bangs, wearing a jacket with a yellow Jewish star on the pocket over a nightdress. She was shivering. Next to her was a little girl. The young woman and the little girl held hands. The little girl was crying.
The three of them stood in the only light, the headlights of an army truck. A stream of exhaust came from the tailpipe of the truck.
One of the Gestapo men in a black leather overcoat came over to the young woman. Saul noticed for the first time how pretty, no, much more, stunning, she was. Like a movie star. The German took out a Luger pistol.
“I’m pretty. I’ll do anything you want,” the young woman said.
“Yes,” he said, and shot her in the head. The little girl screamed. He shot her too, but it seemed to Saul that her scream didn’t stop. Although she was dead—he knew she was dead. She had to be; he could see the blood streaming from her head on the cobblestones—her screaming went on in the dark street.
The German came to Saul and pointed the pistol at his head. Saul could feel the muzzle just touching his hair. The German started to squeeze the trigger. Saul couldn’t help himself. He began to pee. It was always at that moment that he would wake up, the bed wet, smelling of urine.
He never told anyone about his dream. Not his parents, not even when they scolded him about the bed-wetting. His parents never spoke about the war, the Holocaust. Once, when he was eleven, he started to ask. His mother just turned away. His father pretended not to hear.
The second time he asked, his father told him to come with him. They were going on a trip.
They drove all the way to Gary, Indiana, to the big steel mill on the shore of Lake Michigan. There was a platform where visitors were allowed to stand and watch the molten steel being poured from the giant bucket. They watched the fiery display of sparks and felt the heat of the blast furnace on their skin. His father held his arm tight like a vise.
“You see that fire, Shaulele? First you stand in that fire. That fire. Then you ask me about the camps, farshtaysht? Because in that place, Shaulele, the place you’re asking, there was no God.” They drove home in silence and never spoke of it again.
So he didn’t tell them about the dream. He never told anyone. Except Mira.
He told her the night when, as a young CIA operations officer in Tehran in 1978, the Revolution turning too dangerous for her to stay in Iran any longer, he sent her back to the States.
They argued. She didn’t want to go. She accused him of wanting to be apart from her, of wanting her to go. She knew better. It was all around them. Even their friends talked about what was happening every day. What Saul couldn’t tell her was that his friend and best intel source, a former SAVAK officer, Majid Javadi, had warned him, that it was time for all foreigners, especially Americans, to get out of Iran. Still she refused to go.
That night in Tehran in 1978, for the first time since he’d been a child, the dream, the nightmare, came again. He had been moaning in his sleep, Mira said. That’s when he told her.
“I forgot. You were the only Jews in this little town in Indiana, surrounded by Christians. Were they mean to you?” she asked, putting her hand on his arm.
“Sometimes. Sometimes kids called me ‘dirty Jew’ and ‘Christ killer’ or they would look at me funny. One of the teachers said something and they left me alone. I spent a lot of time alone.”
“Little Saul, by himself on the playground,” she said.
“Look, it’s not like Hindus and Muslims in India, Mira. The Christians didn’t try to run us out or burn crosses on our lawn. I was an American kid. That’s all I ever wanted to be. The fear came from someplace else. My parents never spoke about what happened to them in the Holocaust. Never,” he said.
“Why are you telling me this?” she asked.
“Because last night, for the first time since I was a child, I had that dream,” he said.
“What does it mean?”
“You have to go now. It’s a warning. Something terrible is coming,” he said. As soon as the words came out of his mouth, he knew it was true.
Barely speaking to him, she got on the plane. A month later, it was Javadi himself who would teach him how terrible—and how true.
A very fit-looking African-American in his early forties in pressed slacks and a well-fitted casual shirt, hair cut short in a military high-and-tight, stood waiting in Tampa Airport by the luggage carousel. He was dressed as a civilian, as Saul had requested.
“Mr. Berenson, sir?” he asked.
“You are?” Saul asked.
“Lieutenant Colonel Chris Larson, sir. Can I take your bag?”
“I’ll take it. They told you to look for the guy with the beard?” he asked as they walked to the parking lot.
“Something like that, sir.” Larson smiled.
As they got into the car and drove on the airport road, Saul asked:
“Will it take us long?”
“It’s not far. You’ll be sitting in the general’s office in nine and a half minutes, sir.”
“The general likes it precise, does he?”
“He does, sir.”
They drove to the gate at MacDill Air Force Base, and nine and a half minutes, almost to the second, later, Saul was able to park his suitcase in the outer office and was sitting next to his carry-on in the office of four-star General Arthur Demetrius, CENTCOM commander, famous for having implemented the surge in Iraq, the current commander of all U.S. military forces in the Middle East, and in charge of all military-related activities and negotiations including the Status of Forces Agreement and the military resolution of the war in Iraq.
Demetrius was about Saul’s height, six feet. Lean, very fit, about fifty, with an intelligent horsey face, tanned from spending time outdoors. Not just West Point, Saul reminded himself. He had an M.P.A. from Columbia and a Ph.D. in political science from Princeton. He remembered Bill Walden’s description of General Demetrius. “He’s not just some military hard-ass. He listens.”
“So, Mr. Berenson, you know my problem?” Demetrius began, leaning forward on his desk, fiddling with a ballpoint pen. Behind him, Saul could see a bit of the air force base and a palm tree through the office window’s partially closed venetian blinds.
“Your problem is that Abu Nazir, IPLA, knows everything your troops or the Iraqis are going to do before you do. So do the Shiites and the Iranians. They’re always one step ahead of you. Your problem is that the U.S. is on the verge of an economic meltdown and the Congress and the country think the war in Iraq is over, only nobody told the enemy. Meanwhile, we, the CIA, have been playing Whac-A-Mole with IPLA and AQI, al-Qaeda in Iraq, not to mention the Shiites, and have been of little or no use to you. That’s your problem. Oh, call me Saul, General,” he said.
“Finally.” Demetrius smiled, putting down the pen. “Somebody from Langley capable of telling something that resembles the truth.”
“There’s more,” Saul said, and told him about the SOG mission to Otaibah and Carrie’s intel. When he talked about the SOG mission, Demetrius went to a wall map and they followed the mission on the map and then Carrie’s route in Damascus and to Aleppo.
“So the Syrians gave sanctuary to Abu Nazir?” General Demetrius asked. “Why?”
“So that Sunnis in Damascus don’t start strapping on suicide vests or RPGs